Daisies

If the Marx Brothers had ever been directed by someone as anarchic as they were, the results might have resembled Daisies, a deranged 1966 blast from the Czech New Wave’s lone female filmmaker. In the opening scene, a blonde and a brunette, both named Marie, diagnose their era. “If everything’s going bad,” they conclude, “we’re going bad as well!” Jettisoned from drab B&W to loud color, they embark on a wave of destruction, gleefully obliterating social conventions, public spaces and, thanks to director Věra Chytilová, space and time itself. It’s comedy as a political act: the film was banned by Communist authorities for “depicting the wanton,” with one official singling out the waste of food (in a scene where they descend upon a banquet hall). After one more film in 1969, Chytilová didn’t direct again until 1975. Curiously, a filmmaker whose work preached liberty at its most extreme didn’t make like other colleagues (e.g., Milos Forman) and skip town, staying in her oppressive homeland as if to prove her point. —Matt Prigge